18

I put on my treks and my old bomber jacket. I slipped my penknife into a pocket, and on impulse I picked up the smooth old stone from the dresser. It was hard and warm, a touchstone in my hand.

At the door, I paused at the old umbrella rack that had stood there since before I was born, and I picked out the knobbly walking stick of my grandfather's. I had made it for him from a blackthorn when I was just a kid.

I picked up my old fishing hat, spun it in the air, and plunked it down on Paddy's head, flicking the peak up so I could see her eyes.

'Right. Now we're all set for the wilderness,' I said. 'Just watch out for the bear, kid.'

I opened the front door and was just stepping through, still looking down at Paddy's grin, when I bumped smack into Jimmy Allison whose fist was raised high, caught in mid flight on the first knock.

'Jimmy,' I said. 'You nearly gave me a heart attack.'

His hand stayed in mid-air, big and gnarled, and swollen at the joints where the corkscrew of arthritis was inexorably digging in. His eyes were bloodshot and wide. He stared at me for quite a while and I could hear his breath rasp heavily in his throat. There was something wrong with him.

'Jimmy, are you all right?' I asked.

'Where is it?'

'What?'

'Where is it? You've got it.' .

'Where's what?' I asked.

'My book, you damned thief. You've stolen my book. And I want it back.' His voice was hoarse and he seemed really wound up. I just stood agape.

'Give me it back, you bastard. Thought you'd get away with it, did you? Thought you'd steal my book and have it published yourself? After all I've done for you, you little bastard.' I was standing close enough to feel a spray of spittle on my face. Paddy's hand, which had been holding mine, clenched tight.

'Wait a minute Jimmy. That's no language in front of the youngster,' I said, nodding down towards Paddy, who was staring up, her eyes flicking from me to him.

'Don't give me any of your excuses, you dirty thief. You've stolen what's mine, and I've come to get it back,' he said, spitting more flecks at me. Some of them had gathered at the corner of his mouth and were working themselves into a lather.

Before I could reply, Jimmy blundered past me in the hallway.

His big frame nearly filled the narrow space. For some reason, I noticed that his shirt had been buttoned wrongly, and that this was the first time I'd seen him outside his own house without a tie on.

He hadn't shaved either, and the grey and white bristles on his cheeks gave him an unkempt look. The weird expression in his eyes was something else.

Jimmy lumbered into the living room and I followed him, pulling Paddy along with me. She stuck right at my heels, keeping me between herself and Jimmy. From the room I could hear things being moved and when I looked through the doorway Jimmy was rummaging about, scattering books and papers on the floor.

'Right, Jimmy, enough's enough,' I said. 'It's bad enough you coming down here drunk and talking like that in front of a child, but you've gone too far.' I walked towards him, leaving Paddy standing at the doorway, and took Jimmy by the elbow. He swung round and shoved me away and I skittered backwards in surprise and landed in the easy chair. Behind me, I heard the girl give a little cry of fear.

I leapt up again quickly and faced him.

'Okay, Jimmy. I'm not going to argue with you. Tell me what it is you want and you can have it. And I'll see you when you're sober enough to apologise.'

'Give me my book. You took it away. I want it back. Now. Now!'

'Oh, your history? Is that it? Well, you can have it back. Just don't touch anything else.' He kept on rummaging, opening drawers and turning out the contents on to the floor. The place was a mess. I was torn between anger at Jimmy's behaviour, and disgust at what I was witnessing. I had never, in all my life, seen the old man like this. I would have been hard pressed to even remember seeing him angry. I crossed over to the far side of the room to where I'd put the box with all his papers and jottings down in the corner beside the old dark dresser, and hefted it in my arms.

'Is this what you came for? The book? Well here it is.'

Jimmy turned and his red-rimmed eyes fastened on the box. He whipped it quickly out of my hands and clasped it tight against his chest. There was still foam at the corners of his mouth, and he grinned, and then he let out a little laugh that was more chilling than any display of anger.

'Take it and go, Jimmy. Just go now,' I said. I was shaking a bit, from anger or dismay, and I'm sure it showed in my voice. I'm also sure he didn't notice.

He giggled again, a sly, triumphant little laugh that was chilling, and almost ran out of the room. Paddy shrank back into the hallway as he went past, as if she was afraid he'd turn on her, or maybe just knock her down and trample her. I was suddenly afraid of that too, but Jimmy didn't even notice her.

He seemed totally focussed on the box and its contents, as tightly as the arms that clutched it to his chest, and he blundered up the hallway and out of the front door like a looter escaping when he hears the sirens.

I took Paddy's hand and we went out into the pathway and watched as the old man hurried up the middle of the street, half walking, half running, his coat flapping behind him.

That was the last time I saw Jimmy Allison alive.

I loved that old man, and I believe I've told you already what he meant to me.

He scurried away and went home and some time later he was found there, lying at the bottom of his stairs, in a crumpled heap.

His neck was broken, and nobody knew whether he had fallen or had thrown himself down the narrow flight. He was still wearing his coat and his shirt was done up wrongly, and I'm sorry now that I was angry and disgusted with him that last time.

Paddy asked me what was wrong with the old man, and I told her I didn't know.

'Isn't he a friend of yours?' she said. 'He was with us at the festival.'

'That's right, but I think he's not very well today. I'm sorry you were scared.'

'I'm not scared as long as you're there.'

'We'll thank you ma'am, for that big vote of confidence,' I said, trying to raise the mood and shake off the bad taste that Jimmy's visit had left.

I twirled the rough walking stick around.

'Let's go and have some fun.'

I flicked down the peak of the fishing cap and she said 'Hey, watch it, buster', and we went down the path and out through the gate. We went the opposite way from Jimmy Allison.

As we got to the corner of the street and took a left that would lead up in a sweeping curve through Westbay and on to the main street, there was a wail of a siren up ahead starting in the east of town. getting louder as it got level with us, then dopplering down in flat tones as it headed for Levenford.

'What's that? A cop car?' Paddy asked.

'Don't know, sunshine. Maybe an ambulance, or even a fire engine.'

'Pity we missed it. I ain't seen a fire engine here.'

'Haven't seen,' I corrected.

'Right. Haven't. Where's it going anyhow?'

'I don't know. Probably out of town. Sometimes the Kirkland brigade gets called out to help out at Levenford and vice versa. Might not even be a fire engine anyway. It'll be long gone by the time we get up to the main street.'

Up in the centre and past the shops, the place was fairly quiet, which was strange for a Monday morning.

There was hardly anybody about, and I could see at a glance that a few of the shops hadn't even opened yet, which was even more strange. Mary Baker's was still closed, and there was nobody in Tom Muir's butcher's shop which normally had a queue at this time in the morning. The red-faced shopkeeper was standing behind his white marble counter and he tipped his white paper hat to us as we passed, before going back to sharpening one of his big knives on the long whet with the practised ease of long experience.

A woman passed us and we both said hello, but she didn't acknowledge, and Paddy and I looked at each other. There was a clatter, and we both turned and the woman was still walking slowly along, but she'd let go one of the handles of her shopping bag and a can of fruit or beans had rolled out on to the pavement and continued across to the kerb before toppling slowly into the street.

Paddy let go of my hand and skipped back, picked the can up and caught up with the woman. When she got level, she handed it to her and the woman took it. Paddy came back to me and I watched as the woman looked at the can in her hand as if she didn't know how it had got there. She was still looking at it when I turned with a shrug and continued along the road.

We had got a few hundred yards along the main street when I glanced back, and the woman was still there and still staring, as far as I could see from that distance, at the can Paddy had given her. Weird, I thought.

There was hardly anybody else about. It felt as if Paddy and I were walking through a ghost town.

Out towards the Milligs it still looked as if Arden was having a lie-in after the exertions of the harvest festival, but when we got to the bridge that spanned Strowan's Well, just as I was going to turn left and take the path that would lead us up the valley, I saw a pall of smoke further ahead and caught, through the trees, the sapphire-blue sparkle of a flashing police light.

'What's that?' Paddy asked, pointing ahead.

'I don't know. Looks like a fire, or maybe an accident.'

Just as I said that my stomach did a slow, lazy flip, turned itself over as if the ground had just disappeared from beneath my feet, and suddenly I was shaken with a wave of certain dread. I remembered the rumbling, thundery noise I had heard as we motored down from Barbara's place, a deep, growl that seemed to shake the jeep.

I had assumed it was thunder and I remember thinking that Barbara should take it easy if we did get a sudden rainstorm.

But it had come from the east of town. Suddenly I was sure of that. And the clouds over the firth were still far in the west. The thunder had come only five minutes or so after Barbara had left us.

A cold anxiety probed at the back of my head and right then I didn't want to walk a step further.

'Come on,' I said. 'We have to go quickly.' And we ran towards the flashing lights and that tower of smoke that was piling up high into the sky. Paddy kept up with me easily as we got along past the curve at Milligs and hurried along the road to where I could see, in the distance, a couple of police cars and an ambulance blocking the road. There was a fire engine there too.

Even from several hundred yards away, and despite the trees that hid most of the scene, I could hear that loud crashing roar that sounded like a giant blowtorch.

Above the trees a sheet of flame sent tongues of fire licking high. Smoke billowed upwards in a rolling cloud.

My heart started thudding heavily as we covered the distance and got up to where the cars were parked just at this side of the Kilmalid bridge, the old stone hump-back that spanned the stream that ran past the far edge of the Milligs.

There were a lot of men, police and fire-fighters milling about, and not much else to see, unless you counted the thirty-foot pillar of fire that seemed to spout up from the stream itself.

The heat, from almost forty yards away, was intense, and I felt a searing gust on my face. I stopped to look, stunned by the white heat, and with my left arm I made sure Paddy was behind me.

The Kilmalid Bridge had gone. There was nothing left to span the stream, and there was a moraine of rocks and stone all round, scattered across the street and on the verge. The air was shimmering and, through eyes that were already watering, I could see the hulking shape of a truck in the middle of the flames, angled down towards the stream.

Even without the heat haze, it looked like a twisted mass that glowed white and red. And there wasn't that much of it left.

One of the policemen turned round and saw us standing there, and waved his hands at us. Over the roaring of the fire, his words were lost, but there was no mistaking the gesture. He was a lot closer to the flames than we were - and it must have been damned hot where he was, and he wanted us to stay well clear. I took the hint.

I pushed Paddy ahead of me in the opposite direction from the inferno, crossing at the same time to the north side of the road, where there was some shelter in the trees. We got under the spread of an oak, well out of the heat, and sat down.

'What's happened, Nicky?'

'I'm not sure, Paddy. There's been an accident, but I think we'd better stay well away. It looks pretty hot out there.'

'It is pretty hot,' she said. 'It's like when mom opens up the oven.'

'Yes,' I said, and again that sick feeling of dread stole in.

For some reason, I had to get across to the other side of the demolished bridge and find out who was in that wreck.

We sat there until I got my breath back and Paddy stared at me from under the peak of my hat. She looked solemn and a bit scared. So was I. After a few minutes, I stood up and took her hand again, and instead of going along the road I headed into the trees and down the slope towards the stream, maybe sixty yards north of the road. The stream was fairly full, despite the dry spell, but we had no difficulty in crossing it, far from where the action was.

When we were on the other side of the burn, we continued along a well-worn path until we were a good distance from that gusher of flame.

Down on the main road - the Kilcreggan Road again - we followed the hedgerow until I could see another fire engine on this side of the bridge. I told Paddy to wait there and she obediently sat down on a tussock of grass and nodded when I told her not to move. Her eyes were wide and glassy.

She knew that something bad had happened and she didn't know what, but I knew without being told that she had had that dreadful sinking feeling that, whatever it was, it had something to do with her.

I stepped out from the hedge and sprinted towards the bridge. There were two fire tenders, obviously from Levenford, and two teams of men in their yellow helmets were wrestling with thick hoses, straining to aim their hard jets of water at the centre of the flames. Out of the corner of my eye, in a small stand of trees and saplings, I saw a car that was angled off the road, on its side.

My heart did a dive and then it started thudding in my ears. It was Barbara's Volvo, crumpled in on the passenger side. The front end was crumpled and a wheel had sheared off. The windscreen was gone, and even as I turned to look directly at it, I saw the red mush that covered the white of the bent bodywork.

I turned back towards the fire and, as I did so, I saw something, maybe a rag, fluttering limply in the fork of a sapling, white and red among the green. It wasn't until later that I realised what it was.

There was another police car and a uniformed officer standing well behind that. The roar from the flames was deafening, and when I reached him I had to shout to be heard.

He tried to tell me to get back, but I shook my head. I pointed back to the wrecked Volvo and yelled in his ear.

'What happened to the driver?'

'Hospital. Ambulance has just gone,' he shouted into my ear.

'Alive?' _

'Dunno. Couldn't tell. Looked pretty bad. Blood everywhere.'

The left side of the policeman's face was red from the heat of the flames, giving him a two-toned look.

'Which hospital?' I asked, and again he shrugged.

'Western Infirmary, most likely.'

'What happened here?'

'Petrol tanker came off and hit the gas pipe.'

That explained the flames. From where we stood we had to shield our eyes against them, and I had to hand it to the firemen who were a lot closer in than we were, still huddled over their writhing hoses, jetting water into the heat.

'Must have gone up like a bomb,' the man said.

The main gas pipe spanned the stream a couple of yards downstream from the old bridge. It was an unofficial crossing that kids from Arden had used since time immemorial, balancing on the two foot wide shiny black surface, teetering across its smooth length, with a jam-jar full of sticklebacks or minnows.

Now there was nothing left of the pipe, a great hole where the bridge used to be, and just a white-hot tangle of wreckage that used to be the cab and the bowser of the petrol tanker.

I stood mesmerised by the giant blowtorch and I wished to God somebody would go and turn the gas off.

The firemen were never going to be able to put out that fire, no matter how much water they threw on it. I left the policeman at his post and went back to where Paddy was still sitting quietly, and I didn't even look at the wreckage of Barbara's estate car in the grove.

If I had, I'm sure I would have been sick. I didn't want Paddy to see me throwing up. I didn't know what I was going to tell her.

She looked up at me from under the peak, still holding on to my walking stick like a little shepherdess, with inquiry in her eyes. I sat down and put my arm around her narrow shoulders, and two big tears sprang up and rolled down her cheeks.

'Is it my mommy?' she asked. 'Is she dead?'

I pushed myself back and looked down at her, wondering how the hell she'd read my mind.

'What makes you ask that?' I asked, backing out of the question.

Paddy didn't say anything. She just pointed past me, through a gap in the hedge that looked on to a curve in the road. At the other side of the curve, I could see clearly the battered and bent shell of the Volvo.

I had made Paddy sit here alone in the one place that gave her a window on to the wreckage.

I fumbled for words, casting about blindly, and came up with nothing. All I had was the truth.

'It's your mum's car,' I said. It sounded like a confession. 'I don't know what happened, but they've taken her to hospital.'

'Is she dead?'

'I think she's hurt. I don't know how bad. But we're going to find out right now.'

Tears were rolling in a steady chain down her cheeks and I felt her give a little sob. But that was all. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring hug and I felt I could have done with one myself.

'Come on, let's go and find out. We'd better go quickly, 'cause your mum'll need us right now.'

I helped Paddy to her feet and took her hand again and she just came with me, her face blank, but the tears still rolling. I wished I hadn't sat her on that tussock. I could have spun her a line, maybe, delayed the moment, but I hadn't and there was nothing I could do about it.

We crossed back through the trees and over the stream to the far side, and by the time we got past the roaring of the fire geyser I just picked her up and carried her. The fast walk back to my place seemed to take too long. Paddy just put her head into the curve of my neck and soaked me with those big tears and I felt sick for her.

Back at the house I tried to phone the ambulance service and the police, but there was nothing but static on the line. I didn't know right then, but discovered soon after, that the explosion that had wrecked the bridge had also burned away the telephone cable and the main power line that serviced half of the town, in one apocalyptic blast.

All the time I was trying to get a line, Paddy kept looking at me with hope and fear and misery fighting for pole position in her eyes. I didn't have the guts to look away.

Finally I gave up and decided that we just had to go. Getting out to where we could find out what had happened to her was better than sitting here fretting. In a couple of minutes I had Paddy strapped in the jeep and we were heading towards Kirkland to double across the moor road, taking the long way round.

I was in a panic the whole time. Paddy said not a word.